


That's Dynamic - Yennskier ficlet collection

by limerental



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Ficlet Collection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:40:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23770213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/limerental/pseuds/limerental
Summary: An assortment of Yennefer/Jaskier ficlets written from prompts on tumblr@limerentalTags will be added with more ficlets.
Relationships: Jaskier | Dandelion/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 6
Kudos: 108
Collections: Witcher





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous prompt:  
>  _"Ooh, so Jaskier is always tender and loving towards Yennefer. He’s a bard, he lives and breathes romance, and it’s so easy to see past the meanness and fall in love with her. But what about the first time Yennefer is tender towards Jaskier? The first time she acts on those warm feelings? Holds him? Loves him? No crazy “hate” sex, no barbs, just kindness?"_

She’s not made for tenderness, and everyone seems to know this, even Jaskier once believed and accepted this as fact. Something twisted in her long ago that didn’t untwist as her spine did. That has tightened, if anything, as the years went on and left her wretched, hardened, all sharp edges and nothing to grasp that did not cut.

But Jaskier, for all the iron toughness at his core, is downed in cotton softness, is as light as a breeze, can touch her face with the slightest brush of his knuckles and imbue that gesture with unwavering steadiness all the same. He does not come away wounded. He holds her, light and careful, not entrapping, asking for nothing in return but that she allow it.

She doesn’t allow it.

When she is done with him in the beds they tumble into, she is quick to send him packing, setting fire under his heels (occasionally literally). She sleeps more soundly alone, she tells herself. He’s a man, same as the rest, and likely snores and breaks wind and hogs the covers, and she has no time or patience for cuddling, not even in the pleasant fog post-coitus when his head on her chest really does feel quite nice and his whisper-soft fingers begin trailing shapes along her ribcage and he holds his lips for a long beat of time against her skin, nothing directly sexual about the gesture, no expectation for more, and he turns his head to look up at her, his dark hair damp along his forehead, lashes lowered over his blue eyes, all softness when he looks at her, all open adoration and–

She boots him from the bed.

She is not made for tenderness, given or received.

They may fall together from time to time, they may draw out unexpected pleasure from one another, they may begin to seek each other out, to meet in sequestered places (or some not so sequestered) and over the years, come to be ill-fitted but persistent lovers, but Yennefer never allows either of them to think it’s more than that.

She is not made for more than that, and he is made for too much of it. He’s all sweetness, all romance, but not just for her, no, his gentle care and attention to all his lovers is well-known and well-admired. She knows there is nothing special, about the crooked, blissed out smile he shows her as their shared pleasure fades. She knows she is nothing special.

When she finally realizes what she wants, it’s already far too late.

Yennefer is greedy. She wants all of him, she wants everything he has, she wants his sole attention and his steady focus and those little words of worship he sings against her skin, the small murmurs of praise that ground and overwhelm her. Good, so good, so lovely. She could shatter apart under the thrall of it. Be good for me, so good. She wants to be, she wants it to be true, she wants, she wants, she wants.

And one night, in the wake of it, she wants so badly she finds a tremble in her limbs, his head against the swell of her ribcage, her hands still caught tugging in his hair. And instead of loosening, they tighten into a stroke down to the nape of his neck and back again. And instead of pushing him free of her, she shakes as she tucks him closer to her breast. And when he turns to her, brow wrinkling, mouth parted, she presses her forehead to his temple and sighs and ducks to kiss him there along the start of his jaw.

He swallows, makes as though to say something, but chooses to allow the warm silence to stretch instead.

He asks for nothing, a light circle of arms she could easily break free from.

And she allows it.

She is not made for tenderness, but it has made its home in her all the same.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous prompt:  
>  _Jaskier finds out he's a father (or he's going to be a father) ensues yennefer being jealous and maybe profoundly hurt, depending on how Jaskier reacts..._

Their company is accosted at the gates by a girl who has anticipated their arrival, waddling close at surprising speed for one swollen so round with pregnancy. She takes immediately to batting Jaskier about the head and shoulders with the apron tugged off her person and wadded in her hands, the strings stinging like a switch.

Geralt sighs and adjusts the reins on Roachs neck to hand her off to a stableboy and waves off the perplexed guards considering stepping in. Handing off her own mare, Yennefer shares this confusion.

“What– who’s the girl?”

“Don’t even have to ask,” Geralt says, arms folding across his chest as he observes the scene. “Ex-lover. Ex-lover mother. Concubine. Love of his life. Etc.” He grimaces. “This one though… He’ll have played a tourney here oh… about nine months ago, I’d say.”

Yennefer’s eyes catch on the round of the girl’s belly.

“How many?” she asks, imagining little blue-eyed, freckled babes running amok across the Continent. The way the bard goes on, there could be one in every other scrap of a village the land over.

“I haven’t asked. More than one.”

It twists something sour in her chest.

* * *

The babe comes not a week later, the woman squatting to labor long through the night in her rooms on the outskirts of town.

She’s offered board for Roach in her meager stable and pallets in front room, and so Yennefer and Geralt sit together in polite silence as Jaskier helps her pace and stretch and holds her hand, leaning to wipe sweat from her brow.

Yennefer watches. He looks every part the doting father. Practiced.

The midwife switches off to take his place late in the evening, and he collapses at their sides, leaning back against Yennefer’s shoulder. He looks as exhausted as the woman.

“You’ve done this before,” she says. It’s not a question.

“Yeah… yeah once or twice.”

“And your children. You leave them fatherless?” She does not intend her words to twist so cruelly, and he startles from her side, eyes widening.

“I don’t– Yen, of course not. Of course not.” His mouth twists down with a pained expression. “I send what I can… but no one wants their child to have a man like me as a father.”

“But you’re nobility. That has to count for something.”

He shakes his head.

“Almost better to the be the bastard of some dandy than a noble. Neither gets you anything, but the former’s less shameful.” He sighs, a tinge of sadness creeping into his voice. “No, I’m no father to their children unless they’re in need of me.”

He smiles, the kind that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“But perhaps this time? She’s a sweet girl. She doesn’t have anyone else. I could stay here, find local work.” He looks at the girl resting in the midwife’s arms. “This place could use a bard, I think. Could use a bit of song.”

Yennefer shifts an arm and allows him to press his forehead back down against it, letting out a quiet breath.

* * *

The babe comes in the quiet hours before dawn, its hair a shock of curly red and skin swarthy. The girl is straw blond and pale as milk.

“Spitting image o’ the blacksmith’s boy,” says the midwife and spits on he ground.

* * *

The three of them move on, Jaskier laughing at his luck, wiping the sweat off his brow with theatrical relief.

But Yennefer sees it, the way he goes quiet too quickly, stands too still. That evening, she finds him curled in one of the narrow beds at the next inn, turned in early.

She crawls in behind him, chin to his shoulderbaldes, arm around his hip.

She does not have the words for this thing between the three of them and especially not between her and the bard. But sometimes she wishes that she did.

“You would make a good father”, she says, quiet.

He lifts a hand to rest against hers on his waist.

“And you a good mother,” he says.

She breathes against the warmth of his back as night settles. She dreams of blue-eyed children cradled at her hip, tugging at her sleeves, sleeping snug beside them in the narrow bed, close and safe.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous prompt:  
>  _"But DONT THINK about Jaskier weari NV a loose tunic and trousers and a flower crown and singing lullabies to Ciri while Yen mixes herbs for potions and she’s listening to Jas singing..."_

Their little domestic moments where they work in sync. He sings breathily, sweetly, all his guards down if he ever had any, his movements fluid and relaxed, and Yen thinks how he should look ridiculous. He’s a grown man, no comely maiden, and yet, the circlet of flowers sits askew on the dark wave of his hair as well-suited to him as the loose cut of his tunic, the careful embroidery along the seat of his trousers, the silver rings on his fingers.

She knows it should paint a strange picture. This tall man with a surprising breadth to his shoulders, the masculine hair that darkens his open neckline, stubble darkening his round jawline should not be able to walk with such lightness to his step and to look so delicate as he does, his finery fluttering about the knobs of his wrists, his big hands. He should look silly, the flowers as foolish as a jester’s cap.

But instead. Oh, but instead.

He catches her watching, paused in her work, and the fond expression with which he looks at Ciri shifts to something even moreso, his cheeks warmed by his widening smile, a bit of dampness touching the corner of his eyes.

It should be ridiculous, this strange man drawn close to tears at the mere sight of her. This strange and foolish and ridiculous man.

And yes, Yennefer thinks, it surely is.

And all the same or maybe for that very reason, she reaches a hand to tug him close.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous prompt:  
>  _Oh my gosh imagine Yen sliding her hand up Jas’s billow romantic cover skirt and his chemise is open and she’s just smiling at him..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in reference to [this post](https://limerental.tumblr.com/post/615212323728195584/p-yennefer-is-the-sorceress-in-shining-armor-and). now with [ART](https://bluedillylee.tumblr.com/post/615964512055607296/so-there-was-this-post-about-yennefer-and-jaskier)

Jaskier wearing just the most ridiculous billowy sleeved, frilly, translucent shirt with his chest fully-bared, his head thrown back, and Yen is in men’s clothing for damsel rescue-related purposes, calf high leather boots, dark breeches, dark overcoat with a high collar with tails that flutter around her legs. And though he’s not small, she’s got him hoisted up in her arms and half-pinned against the wall, one hand under his thigh hitching his leg up around her waist and the other curled around his back.

And he’s laughing, glad to see her, and more than a little bit happy he made so many digs about her being his knight in shining armor, ignoring her demands that he shut up before he get them caught again, if only because being picked up with ease and pinned in her arms is worth any vitriol she may spew his way. But Yennefer, of course, can’t help but smile at the little bastard. He’s very lucky he’s too pretty for his own good.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous prompt:  
>  _Yen wooing Jas with epic stories of her battles and quests, and there's Jas just hanging on every word, composing along the way, and then "so this is love" starts playing in the background._

Yen starting out being incredibly forthcoming about her own adventures just to spite Geralt and then realizing actually she really could get used to hearing the bard’s songs of her exploits everywhere she goes and finds herself getting into ridiculous circumstances just so she has a good and better story every time they meet, half-worried the next one won’t impress him enough to turn into a song immediately. She’s deliberately one-upping herself constantly, then waits with bated breath to hear the song it inspires.

Eventually she’s so distracted by the thrill and relief of hearing a new ballad about herself that she doesn’t realize until the new song is partway through that it’s not about the recent quest she described to Jaskier at all. It’s about her, no doubt, but it’s not adventure song, instead one of unrequited love and adoration from afar and the pain of falling for a muse who will never return his deeply felt emotion.

And ok, it’s written in such a way that it could be from the point of view of some other hapless soul, Geralt maybe, or any of her other past admirers that Yennefer has told him about, but there are too many coincidental details that mark the narrator as the poet himself, if one knows what to look for.

And Yennefer does know what to look for. Only because, she realizes as the song comes to a close, she’s been looking for it all along.

When she sees the bard again, she hopes to provide fresh inspiration once more. Together, this time.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous prompt:  
>  _Jaskier composing songs about Yen and playing them at parties for her introductions. "He sounds just a little bit in love with you," someone says to Yen. Yen doesn't say anything, because she's pushing deep down this dear little hope inside of her that Jaskier really is a little bit in love with her._

And the worst part of that is she knows he’s a little bit in love with most everyone else but because of their history, can’t be sure of whether that extends to her as well. And even if it’s true, that’s just his default state, and she wants more than that. If he’s to be in love with her, she wants it to be hopelessly and wholly in love with her, nothing less. But he’s surely not. He’s not subtle and would have implied so by now.

And little does she know, the increasingly elaborate songs he writes for her enumerating on her many talents and admirable traits and harrowing adventures are deliberately full of implication. Just completely dripping with “I care about and admire and absolutely want to kiss you, you daft sorceress, how many times do I have to repeat myself in verse?” and eventually, to get her to finally hear it, Jaskier has to outright sing that sentiment for an audience of her alone, dropped to one knee and lute in hand and head bowed so he doesn’t have to see her facial expression as she drums up a polite way to reject him.

But when the song’s last notes have finished, her fingers curl under his chin and lift his eyes to hers. And she’s smiling like a cat that’s got the cream.

And the only thing she destroys with her sweet kiss is his very last shred of doubt.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a ficlet within the [lilacs & dandelions verse](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22929526)  
> set ambiguously, some time after sodden but before geralt arrives at the cottage

Yennefer does not know the full history of the little cottage by the sea, having bought it years ago off a fellow mage who used it as an occasional base of operations the same as she once had.

She didn’t ask if it was the mage who planted the sprawling gardens, who lay down the cobblestone pathways that wind down through the hills to the dunes, who designed the house so that the bedroom window faced west and the kitchen window above the washbasin faced east, or if it was some previous, less magical occupant who built this place stone by stone and plank by plank with loving care, intending to live out their life here.

Perhaps they had done so.

She likes to imagine it. Some merchant from town, not too well-off but no peasant either, scrounging up the coin day by day to move himself and his wife out of the city now that their children have all grown. Dreaming of the coast and the quiet and the sweet sea breeze and the hills rolling with wildflowers.

Finally being granted a sizeable loan from one of the banks in Novigrad, spending the spring and summer with his brothers sweating in the sun to raise the beams and rafters, to press the pavers into the silty soil, to plant the twiggy stone fruit tree out in the garden and fence the young thing in a fishing net to keep out the grazing animals until its little roots could sink deep and branches spread.

And as winter approached, Yennefer imagines the merchant putting the final touches into the place and finally driving the last wagon up over the hills from town, all their worldly possessions rattling in the back and his wife sitting sedately beside him on the front seat. 

Sitting sedately that is, until they crest the ridge to see the humble cottage laid out before them, its clay tile roof cutting a curving line against the blue-grey ocean and cotton tufts of clouds above, and the wife stands in her seat and sweeps the head covering off her greying hair and beats her husband about the shoulders with it and shouts with joy.

And he shouts with her, and the horses prance in their traces, and they nearly topple from the wagon in their haste to embrace.

And they go down to the cottage together and unload their things. The little dresser that still sits in the spare bedroom, warped now with age. The rusted washbasin, sans rust. The flat plank of the low dining room table, an older, simplistic styling much in fashion at the time.

And they light up the first fire in the hearth and make love before it and do so many times long through the harsh winter that follows and through the stretch of years to come.

The merchant and his wife grow old here, until the wife’s arthritic fingers cramp too terribly to keep up with the garden, until the merchant’s eyes grow too poor to look far out to sea, until the wife catches a chill one fall and does not rise from bed again, until the mage that comes to aid her says ’something to keep her comfortable is all I can give, all I can offer’, and the merchant is grateful even so.

She slips away in peace, no pain at her last breath.

But he has no payment that interests the mage, not his coin or his piddling investments or his retirement fund, and so, he offers the cottage that he built so many years ago with its gardens and its walkways and its weathered stone fruit tree, grown tall to brush its branches along the line of the roof.

And the mage accepts, for there is a peculiar kind of magic in a place built for love and strengthened by it daily.

Curled by the warmth of the hearth long past dark, Yennefer imagines all of this, Jaskier slumbering lightly against her shoulder, a worn quilt pooled around the both of them. His head drifts more heavily against her as time slips on, a gentle lull into deeper sleep that he does not resist, trusting her not to let him lie here all night on the floor before the fire. 

Trusting her.

She can feel it, when she closes her eyes and concentrates, that age-old love whispering through each brick and floorboard. The glow of the fire burns behind her closed eyelids. These things have always been difficult for her to read clearly, to follow the veins of faint energy back to the source.

She does not know if there was ever a merchant and his wife or if the place was built with love at all. It may have been simply conjured at the whim of a flippant mage, nothing romantic about it.

The whispers of age-old love that Yennefer feels pulsating through the walls and rafters of the little cottage by the sea may have a very different source. 

She can’t be certain. She’s never been good at reading these things.

But if she’s learned anything in her time spent beside him, the strange and wonderful and ridiculous man who drools against her bare shoulder is almost definitely to blame.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Fragile](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23898094) by [Volts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Volts/pseuds/Volts)




End file.
